On Sunday Daniel spoke about our corporate responsibility to maintain a ‘clean heart’ (Psalm 51). Events like the recent outrage surrounding George Pell do so much damage to the world’s perception of the church. It makes no difference that Pell was working in a different setting under a different denomination. All the world sees is yet another ‘christian’ leader committing the most awful crime to the very people he was called to serve. However nothing changes the fact that this broken but precious Church is God’s plan A for the humanity and there is no plan B. Revelation 22 tells us that it is The Holy Spirit and us, the church, that invite the world to come and be part of the end-time celebration with Jesus, but how do we do that when the world wants nothing to do with us?
It’s by us modelling a different way, with our neighbours, with our family, community, schools and workplaces. How we treat others as individuals can counteract what people see on TV or read in the press about christians or the church. Let’s take responsibility for our own part and keep allowing the Holy Spirit to deal with the things that fall short of the model Jesus gave us.
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago
Daniel.